


to die like our fathers

by kaijuburgers



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Angst, Developing Friendships, Dysfunctional Family, Forbidden friendships, Gen, Growing Up, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Non-Canonical Character Death, Orzammar Culture and Customs, Parent Death, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26747848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaijuburgers/pseuds/kaijuburgers
Summary: “We should leave Orzammar,” the younger cousin says eventually, and his voice is cold and hard as steel, “or we’ll end up like him.”-A fic in which- despite everything- the sons of Bhelen Aeducan and Duran Aeducan become friends.
Relationships: Bhelen Aeducan/Rica Brosca, Male Aeducan/Mardy (Dragon Age), Original Character & Original Character
Comments: 8
Kudos: 9





	to die like our fathers

Endrin Harrowmont is fourteen and Pyral Harrowmont- head of his household, King of Orzammar- is dead. It’s been a long time coming, even if Endrin hates himself for being able to think it so casually. Pyral’s health had been declining for years, his voice growing ever quieter, his body ever weaker. Endrin saw the armour Pyral wore to the Assembly grow lighter and lighter, until it was made of metal beaten so thin that it seemed almost like parchment. Some in the Diamond Quarter whisper that it was poison, and when his cousin (well, ‘cousin’) Adal asks him what he thinks of those rumours when she thinks their tutor isn’t looking, Endrin declines to comment. 

He attends the funeral, of course. He’s a member of Pyral’s house, a Harrowmont before he is his own person. _House over self_ , Endrin’s tutor always tells him, _bring glory to House Harrowmont, like dwarva have since Orzammar itself was founded._ Some of the other members of the House have always eyed him suspiciously, always considered him an outsider. But even they still expect this of him. Pyral is why he was _allowed_ to become a Harrowmont; his adoptive father on paper, even if the man always kept him at an arm’s length. So he dresses up in his best clothes, stands in a line with the other boys of House Harrowmont, and watches as the ritual words are said over Pyral’s stone sarcophagus. 

“Atrast tunsha,” Tercy says, and she is the only person Endrin can imagine making the formal words seem natural and effortless. If he were the one to say them, they would feel as stiff on his tongue as his starched formal wear does against his body. “Totarnia amgetol tavash aeduc.”

“Atrast tunsha,” Endrin murmurs under his breath in response, and his pronunciation is terrible. “May you always find your way in the dark.”

 _I should feel more_ , he can’t help but think. 

Sometimes Endrin wonders why Pyral was always so distant. The funeral is one of those moments where he wonders. The best answer he has been able to come up with is that when Pyral looked at him, he could only see the ghosts of two dead men. That the crown of Orzammar sat on Pyral’s head was Duran’s doing, but so too are the Fereldans who knock at Orzammar’s gates asking to trade. And before that- even before Duran held his brother in his arms as the man bled out in Orzammar’s throne room- Pyral had sat with Endrin’s grandfather and watched as he died. 

Endrin’s mother always tells him he looks like his grandfather. She’s not here, of course. She may have given Paragon Duran a son and House Harrowmont a child, but the brand on her cheek means the House will never accept her as one of them. In exchange for Endrin, she was given quarters hidden at the back of a palace, provisions for the rest of her life, and an order to keep quiet about where he came from.

When Pyral was alive, Endrin barely knew him, and he doesn’t feel like he knows the man any better now he’s dead. His shoulders brush those of the two other Harrowmont boys beside him, and he watches as the sarcophagus is lifted up and out of the hall. Pyral will be laid to rest in the Harrowmont crypt, his body placed alongside the other dwarva who have led their House through the ages. His spirit will be free to return to the Stone, where it will strengthen Her. Endrin knows he should be feeling something, and if it can’t be an all-engulfing grief it could at least be something akin to sadness. Instead, he feels empty. It’s like water has poured through him the way it does through layers of rock and sediment, taking all that it can with it as it washes away and leaving behind only the dirt.

When the ceremony ends, Endrin makes himself as scarce as possible. It’d be smarter to stay; once the body has left the palace, representatives from other houses will come to pay their respects. The respect is false of course, but the opportunity it presents is real. But despite knowing the possibilities, Endrin can’t stand the idea of staying. The chamber feels like it’s covered in generations’ worth of dust, untouched since Orzammar sealed its doors and left the other Great Thaigs to die, and it makes his skin crawl. That, or the itching is from the starch in his formalwear; even then he’ll feel better once he escapes, once the grime doesn’t feel like it’s weighing down his lungs—the very action of taking each breath harder than it was before, like he’s slowly suffocating.

Endrin spent most of his childhood in the Royal Palace, and he knows a good handful of the secret tunnels and passageways. With Tercy and Renvil and all the other leaders of the House distracted by diplomacy, it’s easy to slip his way out of the building and into the Diamond Quarter proper. The air isn’t fresh because none of the air in Orzammar is fresh, but it feels less choked with the lives that have come before it than the Royal Palace does. When Endrin takes in a lungful it’s cool rather than cloying and warm. He still doesn’t feel normal, because it isn’t really possible to feel normal today. But it’s a non-normal that is manageable, in a way that staying in a room and making polite conversation with nobles who pretend to know the adoptive father than Endrin pretends to know in turn isn’t.

As he walks through the Diamond Quarter towards the Commons, movement a little stiffer than normal, a familiar voice cuts through the air like an axe blade. Endrin’s heart is in his mouth. Bernat Aeducan is two years his senior, built like a solid wall, and forever blaming Endrin’s father for what has happened to the Aeducans. The fact that, in the end, the Paragon Duran was restored as a member of House Aeducan does not matter to Bernat. With Duran long dead, Endrin is the closest thing Bernat can set his eyes on.

Endrin wouldn’t choose to run like this on any other day. Despite knowing that the victory would be Bernat’s, it’s a matter of principle. The Provings are where the men and women of Orzammar defend their honour and the fact that her youth ape them- playing at being warriors in the streets- is to be expected. There is no glory in choosing to flee, and even if Endrin is starting to wonder what his place is in the honour of House Harrowmont, he is willing to defend his own honour until his blood and teeth are on the floor. 

At least, he normally is. Today he feels too heavy to fight, like his limbs are coated in layer upon layer of clay, slow and weighed down. So instead, he tries to find the nearest alleyway so he can wait in safety until Bernat moves along. But the pavements of the Diamond Quarter are as treacherous as the rest of it, and the steady beat of Endrin’s boots on the stones seem to ring through the halls. When he pushes himself up against a cold wall, he can hear three sets of footsteps and two voices following him. They stop just outside the ginnel Endrin is hiding in. A muffled voice that he can’t quite identify speaks, and then one set of footsteps continues. 

When Endrin looks up, he expects to see Bernat. He doesn’t. It isn’t Bernat standing at the entrance to the alley, peering at him with a maul in hand. He knows who the other boy is, of course; he can’t remember a time when he hasn’t known. His mother and Tercy and Pyral have told him the story over and over, so many times that sometimes it’s hard to remember that everything in the tale is true. The Aeducan is the son of the man who sent Paragon Duran into the Deep Roads to die. He and Endrin share a name, a grandfather, and a mutual grudge.

Endrin Harrowmont does what is expected of him, and he glares at Endrin Aeducan with all the venom he can muster. It takes so much concentration that he barely notices that the other Endrin is unarmed.

With each passing year, the difference the six months between them makes has become more and more insignificant, and now the Endrins are equal in terms of height and build. It’s just about the only way they look alike. Endrin Harrowmont has the blond hair of his father and their grandfather, his curls and braids the same colour as the linen bedsheets the Royal Palace used to have imported from the Surface. Endrin Aeducan takes after his casteless mother; his red hair reminds Harrowmont of a bottle of cognac he saw one of the older boys steal from the palace kitchens. But Aeducan has their fathers’ eyes, a deep warm brown. Harrowmont’s look like his mother’s.

“Endrin,” a voice that is heavy and deep and so unlike Harrowmont’s own scarcely-breaking voice echoes through the ginnel. “Is there anyone there?”

The Endrins’ eyes meet, cold grey and warm brown, and Harrowmont feels his mouth turn dry. He is certain he knows how this will play out: Aeducan will tell the others that he’s hiding here, and it will end exactly as it always does. He will return to the Royal Palace with red stains on his clothes and a handful of bruises, and the older boys of House Harrowmont will swear revenge on his behalf. Even if some of those older boys don’t like him too well- and they don’t- it’s a matter of principle. That is how it has always been and how it always will be. Harrowmont can’t be too upset over it because—if their roles were reversed—he would do the exact same thing.

But _by the Stone_ , he wishes it were happening a different day. A different time at the very least; one where he isn’t dressed up in clothing designed two ages ago, where he doesn’t feel this hollow inside of him, one where he knows he can at least find it within himself to fight back. But it isn’t, and all the wishing in the world won’t change that. So he stands still, leaning against the wall as if he’s been frozen in place, and waits for the inevitable. It never comes. 

Instead, Endrin Aeducan frowns and looks him up and down. Harrowmont isn’t quite sure why his cousin is taking so much time to do this. Maybe it’s that the Aeducan sees the blank empty expression on his face and knows they won’t get the satisfaction of the reaction they want from him. Maybe it’s that he sees the clothing Harrowmont is wearing and knows where he must have come from. Maybe it’s that seeing him like this, hiding in an alleyway with dust on his clothes, makes him seem like a person rather than a figure that Aeducan is obliged to hate. Whatever the reason, Harrowmont’s cousin decides- despite everything- to show a little mercy.

“No,” the Aeducan says, the words coming slowly as though he can’t quite believe he’s saying them either. He still eyes Harrowmont suspiciously, but something in his gaze softens. “There’s nobody here, Bernat.” 

Harrowmont can feel his stomach drop, because there is no way this will work. Even if the Aeducan truly does want to show him mercy, there is no way that Bernat will fall for his deception. Again, Harrowmont is wrong. There’s a frustrated sigh, and then the voice that must be Bernat speaks up..

“Alright,” it says. “We must have been mistaken.”

When his cousin leaves the entrance to the alleyway, following the other Aeducan boys, Endrin finds he has been holding his breath.

* * *

Endrin Harrowmont is sixteen, and he cannot remember the last time somebody called him by his first name. Those in his house call him ‘the Paragon’s boy’, those outside simply call him ‘Harrowmont’. It was only his mother who called him Endrin. She always used to say it as proudly and often as possible, when fussing over his hair or cleaning a spot off his clothing. He always complained about her fussing, trying to put up as much fight as possible each time she insisted on neatening his braids or running a comb through his beard. There was always a little bit of him that was ashamed of her, he admits to himself much later on. And he hates himself for it now. Endrin misses her like he’s never missed anything else before.

Without her, life in Orzammar simply goes on. He hates that.

In a matter of months, he’s gone from his tutor’s favourite pupil to a disgrace, always shirking lessons when he can, sleeping in until the afternoon and spending his nights awake and roaming through Orzammar’s streets. Tercy attempted an intervention a few months ago, sat him down and told him that if he were to continue like this, he’d never make anything of himself, never be anything but a disgrace to House Harrowmont. He’d nodded, given hollow promises that he’d try better, and continued to spend his nights in the Commons. Sometimes he wonders if Tercy had really thought that scolding him would change him, or if she’d done it for the same reason he’d promised he’d change; because it was what they felt they should do.

This night starts like every other night Endrin has wandered aimlessly. The Harrowmont Estate is far easier to break out of than the Royal Palace once was. The only guards are stationed outside, and Endrin found his way to the servants’ entrance within months of Lord Meino taking the Throne and Palace for his own. Sometimes Endrin likes to walk like this among the empty streets because it makes it easier to think. At other times, he likes to do it because it makes it harder to think. Tonight is one of the latter.

Or at least, it is until he’s walking back through the Diamond Quarter towards the Estate, and he hears a sob. It’s quiet, and when he first hears it Endrin can’t quite figure out who’s making it; if they’re a woman or a man, young or old. It’s none of his business. He goes to investigate anyway.

Shirking his lessons has made Endrin skilled in one aspect at least, and that’s that he’s very good at not being seen if he does not want to be seen. When he edges his way around the buildings, skirting closer and closer to the source of the crying, his footsteps make barely any sound at all.

“ _Oh_ ”, he says the moment after he turns the last corner, ruining any advantage stealth had given him. Endrin Aeducan looks up at Endrin Harrowmont with shock, giving way to anger, as he recognises his cousin in the dim lighting. Under these lamps Aeducan looks washed out, his hair so pale and lacking colour that it could be straw pulled from an imported topside mattress. His eyes are puffy and red, and they look even redder with how pale Aeducan’s skin is. He lifts a hand to gesture at Harrowmont- a half-hearted attempt to shoo him away- and from the layer of dust on loose clothing that slips down from his wrist as he does so, Harrowmont is pretty sure his cousin has been sitting here a while.

It’s then that Harrowmont sees it. The bracelet. 

It’s cheap jewellery and the thin layer of gold laid has rubbed away in places, leaving a dull grey instead of a warm shine. It’s nearly two decades out of style, all thick edges and straight lines where the ladies of the noble caste now demand thin and dainty and curved, influenced by surfacer designs. Between knowing the type of person who would wear jewellery like that- somebody trying to fit in with the noble caste while having none of the means- and with the age of it, nearing two decades, Harrowmont knows where it comes from. And with Aeducan wearing the bracelet and looking like _that_? Harrowmont knows instantly what has happened.

It’s not his place to comfort his cousin. Nobody comforted him, after all, when the same happened to him. But _by the Stone_ does he wish that somebody would have, and that makes it hard to leave the boy alone, despite knowing there’s no guarantee his presence will even be tolerated. He sits down on the paving stones next to Aeducan, enough distance between them that even if the younger boy has a knife he won’t quite be able to reach him. He doesn’t know that Aeducan has one, but even in his empathy he knows to take precautions. Even if Aeducan doesn’t, he’s still glaring daggers at his older cousin.

“I understand,” Harrowmont says, even though he doesn’t know if his words will be welcome. He can feel his heartbeat in his throat.

“Do you?” the reply comes back, half snarled between gritted teeth. But there’s less fight in it than it feels like there should be and that’s enough to make something in Harrowmont feel like, just this once, it’ll be alright to be honest.

“They never let me bury my mother either,” he says, and his voice feels heavy with every word. “Casteless don’t get to return to the Stone.”

Aeducan opens his mouth as if he’s about to say something in return. And then he stops in his tracks, as if he’s just realised what Harrowmont has said. He closes it, and the air between them feels still. For just a moment, it feels like Orzammar has fallen apart around them. Like there is nothing else in the world but the two of them and this alleyway and this glimmer of understanding between them. Harrowmont meets Aeducan’s gaze, and he sees the moment when the younger Endrin feels it too, the layers of anger and pride and principle he has built up melting away until nothing is left but the centre, raw and tender and aching. At their core, Harrowmont realises, they’re both still just scared children.

“I miss her,” Aeducan admits, and his voice is a low whisper like he can’t quite believe what he’s saying either. He looks so much smaller and younger and more fragile like this- legs pulling up against his chest- and despite knowing far too well who the two of them are, Harrowmont can’t shake the impulse to protect the younger boy. “I miss her so badly, and they just treat her like she didn’t exist.”

Harrowmont doesn’t know what to say, so he reaches into his coat pocket to find the stolen flask of ale he keeps there. For the past few months, he’s been trying to make himself as much of a nuisance as possible, causing trouble in the hope that eventually it’ll cause somebody to really look at him—to see how he is hurting, and why he is hurting, and acknowledge it. It started small, refusing to answer questions or answering them more briskly than he should in polite company. When nobody noticed, it became stealing. Just little things, so that when somebody finally notices them he’ll only be in medium level shit instead of deep shit; a few copper pieces here, a flask of ale there. When he holds the flask out to his cousin, Aeducan looks at him, eyes flashing wide for a moment and then narrowing.

“It’s not poisoned,” Harrowmont tries to make his words sound as close to a joke as possible. He never inherited his father’s persuasive tongue though, and he knows it. So he pops the cork and takes a sip to prove himself. He regrets it immediately. Harrowmont may have stolen alcohol before but he’s never drunk it, and the ale tastes awful, like some kind of rotting moss has been mixed with soil and set alight on his tongue. It’s only because he knows that choking will ruin his ‘convince my cousin I’m not trying to poison him’ plan that he finds the will to swallow without gagging. “Here”, he says, once he’s managed to gain back enough feeling in his mouth that he’s pretty sure his nerves haven’t been completely damaged, holding the flask out to the other Endrin. 

Aeducan doesn’t seem convinced. 

“This is a terrible idea,” he says, but he still shifts his body forward, his arm twitching at his side. 

“Yeah,” Harrowmont says, and he’s not sure if he’s full of teenage bravado or just so empty of everything that this feels like the only thing he can do. “It is. You drinking or not?”

Aeducan pauses for a second, and it feels like everything is frozen into place. He reaches for the flask, and when he takes a sip of the foul liquid, he’s not as good at Harrowmont is at suppressing a cough. Something in Harrowmont’s chest catches. _It’s easy to forget_ , he thinks, _that his cousin is just a boy like him_. That they are both children who can’t yet drink dwarven ale without gagging. The Endrins pass the flask between them three more times and it’s in silence at first, but eventually they talk. It’s not quite what could be called a conversation, always just one of them saying something while the other listens. But it’s the closest to a conversation Harrowmont has had for a long time. 

When he finally finds it in himself to mention his mother, his hands tremble around the flask. It’s the first time he has spoken of her to somebody else since she died, he realises with a jolt. When Aeducan tells him of his mother in return- eyes dangerously wet all of a sudden, and his hands shaking just as much as Harrowmont’s do - he gets the feeling that’s something they share.

“Thank you,” Aeducan says after his fourth swig, and then he pauses before speaking again, corners of his mouth twitching into the start of a smile. as he hands the flask back. “ _Endrin_.”

To begin with, Harrowmont doesn’t know how to respond. There’s a jolt, like somebody has taken a stiletto knife and plunged it directly into his heart. Time stops for a moment, and all he can think about is that he is sitting in a dirty alleyway with the son of the man who’s responsible for his father’s death, drinking stolen ale. And that here, in this dirty alleyway, he is being called his name for the first time in far too long. 

He takes the flask in hand. “You’re welcome,” he says, and he finds himself smiling back even with tears pooling in the corner of his eyes. “Endrin.”

* * *

Endrin Harrowmont is seventeen and he is a boy on the cusp of becoming a man, with the scraggly beard to prove it. Close enough to a man that Orzammar demands he be given a sword and a shield and learn to defend it. Close enough to a boy that when he doesn’t know how to answer those demands, he visits his father.

He knows it’s foolish, an act of whimsy carried out by a child. The statue of his father in the Hall of Heroes is just that; a statue. His father’s body was laid down in the earth next to _his_ father- Endrin’s namesake- and if there was anything more of him, it has already returned to the Stone. But this is still something he needs to do- so badly that it feels like his guts are opening up into a pit- even if he can’t explain why. 

The Hall is as empty as to be expected at this time of night, with only a single pair of guards posted on the far side. Duran’s statue is tucked into a corner, mercifully out of their sight, and when Harrowmont falls to his knees in front of it, there is nobody around to see him. It’s smaller than the statues of the other Paragons, but that doesn’t make it feel any less imposing to him. It’s still larger than the man would have been in life, a sword equally as oversized held above its head. The carving is simple but it isn’t crude, and Harrowmont can make out the shapes of his father’s hair and beard, a series of complicated braids in each of them. Harrowmont has spent far too many hours staring into a mirror trying to recreate those braids, desperately trying to make himself actually feel like his father’s son. It’s never worked. Even if his fingers were quick and nimble enough, he doesn’t have enough beard for it. 

“Did you have doubts?” he asks his father, the words spoken aloud even though he knows there will be no answer. In the light of the torches, something on the edge of the statue’s eyes seems to glint. Like this, it’s hard to imagine that Duran was ever real, that once he had been flesh and blood. And it’s easy to forget that he had wants and dreams and vices and regrets, just the same as anyone else. “Did you know who you were going to be? Did you know what the world always intended for you? Or did you once feel like this too?”

The statue remains a statue. Harrowmont can’t explain why that makes him so angry. His jaw clenches, and when he balls his shaking fists, he can feel the heartbeat in his fingers growing strong and more rapid. He can’t raise his voice without attracting unwanted attention, so instead of screaming like he wants to, he hisses. “Please”, he says, and he can feel a tear threaten to crawl its way out of the corner of his eye. “I know you’re gone. But I need something. Please.” 

Once that first tear falls, the next are quick to follow. Harrowmont begins to cry with the force of a person vomiting on all fours, kneeling over until it feels like his whole body is touching the cold stone floor. Despite the violence of it, he cries silently, mouth opening in a scream that cannot be made aloud. 

Again, the statue remains a statue. But this time there’s a gentle hand on Harrowmont’s shoulder.

“It’s made of stone,” the familiar voice says, in a tone that’s as hard to pin down as it always has been. It could be sympathy, a moment of understanding from somebody else who knows the pain of growing up fatherless in the Diamond Quarter. It could be full of scorn, mocking him for expecting answers from a man who’s been dead almost as long as they’ve both been alive. It’s likely a mix of the two. “It can’t give you any answers.”

Despite the hint of cruelty in those words, the other Endrin gets down on his knees next to him. Harrowmont can’t help but think about how Endrin Aeducan’s hair looks bronze in this light, the same colour as the sword from the Exalted Age that hangs in the hallway outside his quarters. When Aeducan hands him a rag to dry his eyes, he wonders idly how many bodies that sword has been run through. But the younger dwarf is gentle in his moment of kindness, and when Harrowmont places his hand on the stone floor in front of them, he places his own hand on top of it, their fingers tangling as he gives a comforting squeeze.

“Why are you here?” Harrowmont asks eventually, voice the lowest whisper he can make. He’s pretty sure his eyes are still puffy and red, and his throat feels raw and dry. 

“Followed you,” Aeducan whispers back, and Harrowmont can’t help but want to laugh at the honesty. He bites it back, knowing it will alert the guards to their presence. “Saw you sneaking out of the Diamond Quarters and figured you were up to something.”

Harrowmont raises an eyebrow. “You saw me sneaking and didn’t think I might want to be alone?”

His cousin shrugs, lifting his hand from Harrowmont’s for just a moment. “I thought you might want company.”

There’s a pause, and Harrowmont thinks about everything that has led up to this moment. About their fathers and their uncle and their grandfather, about the other Thaigs and the Blight and the Archdemon. About the dwarva who have carried their names before them- not just their first name, but their last names too. About the weight of carrying those names on his shoulders, weighed down by too many lifetimes for one person to bear. 

“Thank you,” he says, and he means it.

His cousin squeezes his hand in response and they stay there a while, staring up at the statue of Duran. There’s footsteps in the hall behind them, but with how much the statue of Duran has been tucked away, even their long shadows don’t give them away.

“We should leave Orzammar,” the younger cousin says eventually, and his voice is cold and hard as steel, “or we’ll end up like him.”

“Paragons?” It’s a bad joke. Aeducan snorts, and then is serious again.

“No,” he says, and his voice sounds heavy with regret. “Dead. Like the both of them.”

He’s right, and Endrin Harrowmont can feel it in his core. Orzammar is a reanimated corpse of a city, only alive because it buys a little more time with each life that ends in service to it. It’s not a perfect trade- sometimes Harrowmont wonders if this shambling state can even be called being alive- but it’s a trade the city will always make. Duran’s corpse is rotting beneath the city, Bhelen’s bones have turned to dust, and the area of the city the casteless have claimed used to be palaces. The Shaperate calls it glory to die for Orzammar, claims that his father was a living ancestor. But he knows that nothing was ever as the historians in the Shaperate make it sound. Nothing ever ends in beautiful tragedy; it just ends, and the Shaperate turns it into poetry.

Orzammar is dying and one day it will be dead. If they stay, maybe they will die too, like their fathers before them.

But the part of him that has grown used to this cannot comprehend leaving, not yet. He wonders if this is how Duran felt, before that choice was taken from him.

“We’d be casteless,” he says, but there’s no fight in his words. Aeducan can tell. “If we left for the surface, we can never come back.”

His younger cousin shuffles slightly before speaking. “Our mothers were already casteless,” he says, “Weren’t their lives worth just as much as our fathers’ were?” 

The younger Endrin’s words are dangerous, because officially the answer is yes, and they both know it. Just as they both know what they would say if they were answering honestly. He gives the older dwarf’s hand a squeeze. “Endrin,” he says, with a tenderness in the first name that Harrowmont doesn’t know he has heard in the voice of anyone else. “Do we really want to be in Orzammar, or do we stay because we don’t know anything else?”

Harrowmont frowns and says nothing more. His cousin stays with him, until his eyes no longer betray the fact that he has been crying.

It’s too late for their fathers. Maybe it’s not too late for them.

* * *

Endrin Harrowmont is eighteen and in two-dozen-or-so steps, he will no longer be a Harrowmont. His cousin is by his side- close enough that they brush arms as they walk- and if it weren’t for Aeducan’s presence, Harrowmont doesn’t know if he could stand the long walk through the Hall of Heroes towards Orzammar’s gates. The eyes of the Paragons follow him with every step and they burn holes into his back. Every time he lifts a foot and places it back down, it’s harder to do than it was the time before. His hands tremble a little more the closer he gets to the main gate. 

Orzammar has nothing left for him, and he knows it. He can’t point to one decisive moment when her collapse began- maybe it was with the death of his grandfather, maybe it was when Pyral was deposed, perhaps it was even earlier when Orzammar first closed its doors on the other Great Thaigs- but it cannot be stopped now. It may not feel like they’re near the end of an unwinnable war, but they are. The Darkspawn get a little closer to Orzammar, her birth rate drops a little, and food runs a little more scarce with each passing year. Orzammar is collapsing, and if the two of them don’t leave she will bury them under the rubble like she did their fathers and mothers before them. But under the gaze of the Hall of Heroes, it’s still hard. He can’t shake the feeling that the Paragons are looking at him with nothing but contempt in their hearts. 

A hand clasps his, and he is suddenly aware of how fast and heavy his heartbeat is in his fingers.

From the very moment that they first talked about leaving, Harrowmont always thought that Aeducan would walk through the gates of Orzammar with his head held high and proudly, with a confidence about his decision that the older cousin could only hope for. When Aeducan turns to face him- fingers interlocking with Harrowmont’s, his bottom lip caught between his teeth, and with a nervous twitch in his shoulders- Harrowmont realises he was wrong. Aeducan needs him to be here as much as he needs Aeducan to be by his side.

“We’ve made it this far,” he finds himself saying, and with each word he finds himself believing it a little more, because Aeducan needs him to believe. He squeezes his fingers against his cousin’s gently. “There’s only a few more steps. We can do this.”

Aeducan leans away from Harrowmont for a moment, looking back to the hall they passed though. The haft of the maul he carries on his back shifts slightly with the movement, and in this light the maker’s mark of Smith House Turana glints for just a moment. Aeducan carries almost nothing with him except the maul; just a pouch of sovereigns at his belt, the set of simple leathers he’s wearing, and a cheap bracelet on his wrist that all the plating has rubbed off of. Harrowmont isn’t travelling any heavier; aside from his leather armour and the dagger on his back, the only thing he’s taking with him is a bedroll and a few days of rations. _This is all we’ll have left_ , he realises. _This is everything of home that we’ll be able to carry after we cross that threshold._

There’s a moment when he’s unsure if he and Aeducan will change their minds, wonders if—even standing side by side in solidarity—the two of them won’t find it in themselves to leave. The guards stationed to either side of the gate have noticed them, and from the look they give the Endrins- like every second they look on them it curdles their guts like acid curdles milk- it’s obvious that they know why Aeducan and Harrowmont are here. There are two reasons dwarva come to the Hall of Heroes, and those who come to pay their respects don’t bundle up the most important of their belongings to carry with them. Aeducan looks tired- more tired than somebody of eighteen years should be able to look- and for a brief moment Harrowmont wonders how heavy the maul is. But it’s not the maul making him tired, and Harrowmont knows it, even if the rich decorative carvings of the seal of House Aeducan that cover its surface cannot be making it any lighter.

And then Aeducan turns back to him, and there’s a fire in his eyes that makes Harrowmont know they can see this through. It is not the burden that bears heavy on them, he realises, it is how they are carrying it. 

When they pass through Orzammar’s gates, they do it hand in hand.


End file.
